


Hollow Eyes and Lacquered Nails

by waterlit



Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: Kagura yearns for freedom, One-sided Sesshomaru/Kagura, Tragedy, old fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-25 09:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9812939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waterlit/pseuds/waterlit
Summary: Marionette strings creak as she flits into the wind.





	

A gentle breeze in the background, birdsong overhead, and the sun warm against Kagura's cool, porcelain-pale neck. The scent of blooming lotuses in the distance. 

With a flick of her slim wrist she snaps the lacquered fan shut, and she stretches languidly, snakelike, pink lips pouted. She fluffs her coiffure up, and draws with tightly-knit fingers (sharpened and coloured nails only befit women of elegance, like herself) a thin wisp of a feather. It flutters in the light wind, sinking, shrugging open like a half-bloom among the orange fingers of dawn, and then she sits on it, ready to leave.

She meets Sesshomaru in the forest, jewelled tears in her eyes, and delivers to him classified information on a silver platter. He listens to her, does not fight her, but she can see the coldness and indifference in his empty eyes. She shivers as she backs away, shuffling with painful feet long grown cold with treachery, disbelief and anger.

At last, she tears her own wind-swept, tear-lined gaze from his perfect face, and settles once more into her leafy throne. She looks at him one last time, reaching out to finger the delicate threads of sunshine that drape themselves reverently about him.

A flash of red; and she draws her hand away, fully aware of the fact that the details of her lacquered nails have glinted off his face. She shrinks, and soars into the wind.

(as only a daughter of the wind can)

_I am the wind; one day I will fly free…_

Naraku, that vilest of monsters, lurks still in the shade of pots, simmering strange concoctions behind dainty screens in darkened rooms. His accursed hand grasps her heart, locking her into an eternity of solitude. But some day, she will escape and leave in an echo of wind, _and then I will never look back._

But that time is not yet come, and for now Kagura can only kneel in her patterned kimono, her slim hands—knotted through with the cobwebs of slavery—clasped together as they navigate the labyrinth of thread that constitute a tapestry, and wait impatiently.

( _Sesshoumaru, wait for me…_ )

But someday, perhaps, she may yet live to fly free of marionette strings. She will be a soulless puppet no more; she will never, never again be the hollow-eyed puppet of a monster.

But she remembers the shifting splinter of red against the pale skin of Sesshomaru's face, and she knows, deep down, that freedom will never quite be hers.

_I will be free…and then what?_

(The wind howls across the ink-smudged sky, whipping through the echelons of time to hunt her down…)

_I will rise against Naraku and rejoice in the ashes of his ruin; I am the wind, and one day, I will fly free._

But the wind snaps at her with its blistering jaws, and she fears once again that it will swallow her whole into its hollow belly whence she came.

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on FFN in Feb 2010. Slightly edited.


End file.
